No Luck With Online Dating? 7 Things You Need to Change

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If you’re looking for a date, boyfriend/girlfriend, or husband/wife, online dating has the numbers to make that happen. However, if you’ve been trying for several months (or longer) and still haven’t met anyone special, you may start to think that you’re unlucky. You’re not, though. You just need to tweak a few things. Here are seven tips for improving your online dating life!

1. Make Sure You’re On the Right Dating Site

The first step to having success online is choosing the right dating site. You’re setting yourself up for failure from the beginning if you use a platform that can’t cater to your area, relationship needs, and appearance, personality, and lifestyle preferences. The best way to decide on a dating site is to read its homepage and About page as well as reviews from users and third parties (like ours). Below are our top three favorites:

Match can work for anyone — no matter their age, gender, sexual orientation, location, profession, religion (or lack thereof), education, or hobbies. It was the first dating site ever created (circa 1995), and it’s responsible for the most romantic connections of any other dating site.

You can take Match for a test run by signing up for a basic membership — which will allow you to fill out a profile, edit your profile whenever you want, upload numerous photos, and look for matches. You’ll also get daily match suggestions sent to your inbox, and have the ability to “like” members, and create a Favorites list, among other things.

Next up, we have Elite Singles. If intelligence is one of your turn-ons, you’ve come to the right place. More than 80% of members on Elite Singles hold a bachelor’s, master’s, and/or doctorate degree. You’ve also come to the right place if you’re 30 or older and are looking for a lifelong partner — more than 90% of members are at least 30, and 100% desire a serious relationship or marriage.

Elite Singles is the premier dating site for educated professionals. Most members are upper-income with college degrees, and its impressive Fraud Detection system ensures no-nonsense dating. Full Review »

rounds out our list. In terms of the mobile experience, it hardly gets any better than on Zoosk. You can register via your Facebook or Google+ profile, saving you a lot of time. Once your info and photos are uploaded, you can start browsing via the Carousel, SmartPick™, see who’s currently online, and who’s viewed your profile.

Zoosk will keep track of who you like and who you don’t like, and the site/app will use that information to recommend even more compatible matches in the future. Another perk? Zoosk is free to download via iTunes and Google Play.

We’re not all journalists, so check out grammar tools, like Grammarly and the Hemingway app, which will do all the work for you. You could also ask a friend for help, but, at the very minimum, you should double-check your own profile.

3. If Your Photos Aren’t Varied, Add Some More

Your photos are the first things people are going to look at, so if you only post one photo (and it’s a bad one), you might as well cancel your membership right now. It only takes one-tenth of a second for someone to form an opinion about you, and a blurry, far away, or inappropriate photo is going to make him or her form a bad opinion of you.

Obviously, you don’t want to change up your looks and activities so much that you’re misrepresenting yourself, but make sure you post a variety of photos (e.g., action and portrait).

Online daters want to see your face, body, and photos that show what you like to do, so upload at least one portrait, one full-body shot, and one action photo (e.g., of you skydiving). Give people a little glimpse into your life, and you’ll be rewarded with more likes, messages, and dates.

4. Balance Your Expectations With Reality

Since people tend to be so focused on photos when they’re dating online, you want to make sure you aren’t becoming too picky. It can be easy to swipe left on someone because her hair was shorter than you like or his teeth were a little crooked, but try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

At the end of the day, those kinds of superficial dealbreakers don’t matter. If a potential match has everything you’re looking for, but maybe they don’t like the same movies or have a different job than what you’d like, they’re worth going on a date with to see where things go.

5. Have You Shared Enough About Yourself & Your Wants?

Writing about ourselves can feel unnatural and almost like we’re bragging, but that’s what we have to do if we want to do well online. One or two sentences and generic statements aren’t going to cut it. Try talking out loud to a friend about yourself and your dating preferences, and have them write down or type out an example profile while you talk.

This is no time to be shy — people need to know what your personality is like, what your interests are, and what you desire in a date or partner.

Basically, you don’t want to just tell people that you like sports and are an accountant — you want to give them the why behind it. Did you get into sports because your older brother played and you always looked up to him? Did you play in college? Did you become an accountant because your mom and dad are both accountants? Did you join a math team when you were in middle school and that’s what made you fall in love with numbers? Obviously, these are just examples, but think about the motivating factors behind how you got to where you are in life, and share those with your fellow singles.

Maybe you’re the type of person who always has a funny story to share, or maybe you have a dark sense of humor that’ll appeal to others who do, too. You could be self-deprecating, satirical, highbrow, or something else. The point is to play to your strengths!

7. Look At How Much Time You Put Into Online Dating, Then Double It

We’re not going to sugarcoat it for you — online dating can be a lot of work. You get out of it what you put into it. If you’re only spending an hour a week looking for dates and messaging people, you’re going to see results that match that effort. The opposite is also true. If you’re spending an hour a day online dating, you’ll have a higher chance of meeting someone you really like.

If you spend two hours a week online dating, bump it up to four, and so on. Finding a match does take a good bit of effort.

We can all find time somewhere. Maybe skip taking that fifth Buzzfeed quiz or watching the seventh episode of “Stranger Things.” It can wait until tomorrow. Instead, log into your dating site/app to see if anyone new has joined.

Follow These Tips & Soon You’ll Be Lucky in Love!

The stats we mentioned at the beginning of this article prove that online dating works. But, if you haven’t had any success yet, it’s understandable to get frustrated and start to think that something might be wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with you! Making even a few small changes will make a big difference. Think of this article as your very own four-leaf clover — there to give you a little luck when you’re feeling down.

As the editor-in-chief of DatingAdvice.com, I oversee content strategy, social media engagement, and media opportunities. When I'm not writing about cheese or my 20-year love affair with Leonardo DiCaprio, I'm listening to The Beatles, watching Harry Potter reruns (I'm a proud Slytherin!), or drinking IPAs.

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Disclaimer: Great efforts are made to maintain reliable data on all offers presented. However, this data is provided without warranty. Users should always check the offer provider’s official website for current terms and details. Our site receives compensation from many of the offers listed on the site. Along with key review factors, this compensation may impact how and where products appear across the site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). Our site does not include the entire universe of available offers. Editorial opinions expressed on the site are strictly our own and are not provided, endorsed, or approved by advertisers.